Navy Begins to Face Age of Chemical Weapons : Studies Show Service Lags Behind Others in Readiness for Germ or Gas Attack

The U.S. Navy is ill prepared to defend itself against an attack involving chemical or biological weapons, even after years of warnings that not only the Soviet Union but two dozen smaller nations--including Iran and Iraq--possess such weapons and the means to deliver them, according to numerous experts and recent government reports.

Only two surface ships in the Navy’s fleet of 568 are equipped to operate for an extended period in a contaminated environment. Naval shore installations have consistently done poorly in exercises designed to test their response to a chemical attack. The Navy’s ability to support an amphibious assault in which chemical weapons are used against U.S. forces is questionable.

And, although Navy ships carry gas masks and other protective equipment and regularly practice decontamination procedures, naval officers concede privately that they remain reluctant to confront the horrifying prospect of a chemical or germ-warfare attack.

Facing a Horrifying Thought

“Nobody likes to think about running into a cloud of nerve gas,” said a top officer aboard an active-duty warship. “If we really thought it was going to happen, we’d all be in another line of work.”

The Navy, in many ways the most conservative of the military services, often appears to operate from an ingrained faith that the other side will, as one senior naval officer put it, “play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.”

The Navy’s modern warships, with their fancy electronics, precision guided missiles and high-tech jets, are well-equipped to respond to attacks from submarines, surface guns, missiles and airplanes and to deal a crippling retaliatory blow.

Yet the Navy’s vulnerabilities are exposed when the fleet is confronted with less conventional threats, as dramatized by the scramble to deal with mines and the small, high-speed gunboats that Iran has employed in the Persian Gulf. The recent attack on three Iranian speedboats was carried out by Army helicopters assigned to the Navy’s gulf task force.

While Pentagon planners acknowledge that chemical weapons could be used in the gulf, years of neglect in ship construction, training and equipment purchases expose the Navy to potential catastrophe, experts said.

Ships to Be Refitted

The Navy says that it has begun a program of ship construction and “back-fitting” of ships that will provide 22% of the fleet with complete protection against chemical weapons by 1992. It continues to buy gas masks and protective suits, and will soon have new offensive chemical weapons that it hopes will serve as a deterrent to chemical attacks, Navy spokesmen said.

The worst nightmare, naval experts said, would be a chemical warhead hit that penetrated a ship’s skin and spewed nerve gas or some other lethal toxin into the vessel’s ventilation system.

“If they can put a gas shell into a carrier, the internal circulation system will do their work for them,” and put thousands of crewmen at risk, said a former NATO naval officer.

“From a skyscraper to an aircraft carrier, if you can get access to the ventilation system . . . you can create a slaughterhouse,” said Neil Livingstone, an expert on terrorism and the author of “America the Vulnerable,” a book about chemical and biological warfare.

A chemical shell exploded above the deck of a carrier could halt air operations for hours--or longer, depending on the type of agent used--an interval that could be decisive in battle, Livingstone said. There is no known way to decontaminate aircraft, because the solvents used to neutralize chemical weapons would destroy delicate systems on modern airplanes, he said.

Won’t Discuss Subject

The Navy would not grant on-the-record interviews on the subject of chemical warfare. In response to written questions, the service recently insisted that it “is prepared to meet all contingencies, including chemical, biological and radiological warfare.” It said that the possibility of a chemical attack on U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf “is not a matter for public discussion.”

Despite the Navy’s reluctance to talk about the problem, recent reports indicate serious shortcomings in its preparations for chemical or biological attack.

In all the military services, medical procedures and equipment for dealing with a chemical warfare are “inadequate,” according to a General Accounting Office report released last year. The Navy lags behind in nearly every aspect of chemical warfare defense, the GAO reported.

“Navy officials stated that the Navy’s guidance on chemical warfare is limited and that the Navy is behind the other services in this area, just beginning to identify its needs,” the GAO report said.

The Pentagon spends roughly $900 million a year on defenses against chemical weapons. The Navy’s portion is only about a tenth of the total, and that includes gear purchased by the Marine Corps, which has an active anti-chemical warfare program.

‘Extreme Vulnerability’

Recent classified Pentagon studies have concluded that most U.S. military units could survive an initial chemical attack--except shore-based naval facilities, which lack adequate planning and equipment to function after such an attack. A 1983 Navy study found that U.S. Navy bases abroad suffer “extreme vulnerability” to chemical attack, the GAO reported.

Another classified Pentagon report, covering a joint Navy-Marine Corps amphibious exercise involving enemy use of chemical weapons, found “immediately critical” problems in carrying out air, surface and medical operations in a chemical environment.

“Navy personnel demonstrated a notable lack of mission performance experience under simulated chemical warfare conditions,” the Pentagon study found. “Medical decontamination procedures were not properly accomplished . . . “

In its written responses, the Navy said it was able to support an amphibious operation in a contaminated environment, but “the level of support provided may vary, dependent upon the time elapsed after the initial troop landing ashore.”

Most nations have renounced the use of chemical and germ weapons under the terms of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which the United States signed in 1975, but U.S. intelligence agencies now count at least 23 nations that have such weapons and estimate that the number will approach 50 by the end of the century.

New Weapons Produced

The United States ceased production of chemical weapons in 1969, and has slowly been destroying existing stocks. Citing the nation’s lack of a credible chemical deterrent, however, Congress last month authorized the Defense Department to begin producing two new types of chemical weapons. Official U.S. policy remains that it will not use chemical weapons in wartime unless an enemy uses them first.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union continued to build and modernize its stockpile, so that today, it contains an estimated 300,000 tons of up-to-date chemical and biological weapons, about six to seven times the size of the antiquated U.S. stockpile.

The Soviets also have spent heavily on protective gear for their ground and naval forces, anticipating that any future war will involve chemical weapons, according to Pentagon reports.

The United States, in the meantime, has allowed its defensive capabilities to diminish dramatically, although there has been some recent progress toward modernizing equipment. The Army’s latest tank, for example, the M1A1 Abrams tank, incorporates what it calls the “NBC” (nuclear-biological-chemical) protection system, which allows the vehicle to be sealed against contaminants.

Self-Sealing Destroyers

The Navy, too, has begun to prepare itself to sustain operations in a contaminated environment. The latest class of guided missile destroyer, the Arleigh Burke class, incorporates the so-called “Citadel” concept for sealing vital spaces against contaminants, using a positive-pressure ventilation system that keeps interior air pressure higher than outside the ship to prevent chemical or radioactive elements from entering.

Only one of the new destroyers has been completed and placed in active service, however.

The Navy also has under construction a new class of supply ship and three types of landing craft that will have the Citadel system.

The Navy has a program for outfitting some existing frigates, destroyers and cruisers with Citadel-type collective protection systems, at a cost of between $20 million and $30 million each. The Navy is still considering whether to add such systems to aircraft carriers, a project it said would cost more than $50 million for each ship.